1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document reading apparatus, hybrid processing apparatus, document reading processing system, and document reading processing method for reading small pieces of paper (i.e., slips) on which magnetic ink characters and image data are printed. “Image data” as referred to herein generally includes text, graphics and/or images that are printed on paper by laser, ink-jet, dot-matrix, etc. printing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Slips such as checks have conventionally had essential information such as the bank, account number, and even check amount information printed on the front of the check in magnetic ink. Whether or not a check is valid and can be used is typically determined by reading the magnetic ink information with a document reader that can read the magnetic ink characters while conveying the check or other slip through a document transportation path. In addition to reading magnetic ink characters, demand has also grown for document readers that can optically scan the surface of the entire check and store the scanned check image as image data. This demand has led to the development of document reading apparatuses (hybrid processing apparatuses) that execute both magnetic reading and optical reading processes. See, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. 2003-6713.
In general, a slip reading apparatus such as described above is connected to and communicates with a host device over a network, a serial communication bus, or USB communication channel, for example, to form a document reading processing system for processing checks and other slips. The operation of the document reading apparatus is controlled by specific control commands received from the host device. When a desired slip is read with this document reading apparatus, the host device controls operation by, for example, first sending a control command to read the magnetic ink characters and receive the resulting magnetic ink character data, and then sending a control command to optically read the image on the slip and receive the resulting image data.
To control document reading apparatus operation from the host device as described above, however, the slip must first be loaded and transported in order to read the magnetic ink characters, and then must be loaded again and transported a second time for optical reading. The host device must therefore wait to sequentially acquire the necessary magnetic ink character data and image data. This operation is complicated and inefficient and ease of use is thus poor. The host device also cannot determine the operating condition of the document reading apparatus, and unnecessary reading operations may therefore also be run.
The present invention is therefore directed to solving the foregoing problems, and an object of the invention is to provide a document reading apparatus, method, and document reading processing system whereby both magnetic ink character data and image data can be read and captured from a slip document during a single pass through the transportation path, thus making complicated operation unnecessary, shortening the time required for document reading, and thereby providing excellent convenience and ease of use.